This quartet is like a Latin whirlwind that sweeps up everything in its path. The homegrown Montreal band lit up the floor during the Syli d’Or finals in 2023, with its unique way of mixing humour into its spicy salsa music, the perfect combination to get people mingling and dancing up a storm with those next to them. It’s the signature recipe of this impressive group of guys who formed their tribe during the pandemic, demonstrating their mastery of Latino rhythms both in song and dance.

A thread of tradition links the Tribu’s members, whose creed is simply “Salsa Brava.” Not that Spanish tomato-based sauce used on fried potatoes, but the style of music and dance, also called salsa dura, that emerged in the 1970s with the Latino diaspora in New York’s “school of the streets.” It’s that same school that La Tribu Salsa Band continually resurrects through the marriage of its brass instruments, piano and percussion, as we look on in amazement. These ambassadors of Afro-Latin-America have a magnetic stage presence that will make salsa lovers blush and would have made the late, great King of Salsa, Johnny Pacheco, smile with pleasure.